What are your favourite recipe books you heavily use?

[treeindigo]

I love browsing recipe books for inspiration but find most of the ones I have I only like a few of the recipes. I'm not the most experienced of cooks so tend to like simple meals, don't really do fish. I have a few Jamie Oliver and River Cottage ones, wondering if Joe Wicks would be a good shout for simplicity.

What do you like?

The Farm Table - Julius Roberts
Make More With Less - Kitty Coles
Supper - Flora Shedden

I love cookery books and there’s some great suggestions here. I particularly love Mary Berry’s - I have her last 6 or so books and cook regularly from all of them.

Delia's Summer and Winter collection.
Jamie's MOF.
Rick Stein, Far Eastern Odyssey.
The Green Roasting tin.

Thanks so much everyone, my Amazon wish list is huge now!

Just curious if people have recommendations for Christmas recipe books?

Anything by Nigella.

My friends and I swap recipe books a lot, but the one book that will never leave my house is Diana Henry's From Oven To Table. It's my most cooked-from book.

One Pot, Pan, Planet is another good one though I don't tend to cook the full recipes as much as use the 'ten ways to use' pages.

I have Nigella Christmas and also Nigel slater's Christmas one. I love getting the Nigella one out every year to spend an even browsing it and plan the food. It's a gorgeous looking book too.

The Nigel slater one is also fab and has some great recipes - I think it's more of a winter book than a Christmas one - but Nigella has my heart ❤️

I like
Nigel Slater - Real Food and his Christmassy one
Rukmini Iyer - The Roasting Tin and The Quick Roasting Tin
Nigella - How To Eat
Delia Smith - Complete …

Plus I have a few 90s paperback pasta and quick books and a Women’s Institute one that was probs first published in the 70s that has some good jumping off points for meals and cakes, it’s good on how to make a dumpling

Jamie Oliver’s first two books (Naked Chef) may be old but I still use them
Nigella’s How To Eat - absolute essential. I learned how to make so many basics from that.
Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess and Annie Bell’s Gorgeous Cakes for baking recipes
Nigel Slater’s Real Food and Appetite
Meera Sodha’s Made in India
Ottolenghi’s Simple (it is simple once you get the hang of his style)

I cut down the cook book stash to 75, and I do enjoy all of them, but those are the ones that fall open to stiff, messy pages of well loved recipes.

Pinch of nom. Really tasty and healthy, lots of variety.

Delia Smith's Christmas book is excellent but I am unsure if it is still in print.

i know it’s not a book, but I get a lot of inspiration from the Waitrose recipes website.

@beetlebrain Based on your resounding review I've just ordered a copy. "Shocking state of most of the pages" does it for me.

I can recommend my own falling-apart copy of "Complete Indian Cookbook" by Mridula Baljekar.

It's available on Amazon second hand if not.

Fay’s Family Food from Fay Ripley!
Her Chinese Takeawy of sticky ginger chicken with Chinese roast broccoli has been loved for many years. All her books are good. The salmon in pea sauce from ‘What’s for Dinner’ is just so easy too.

The Dairy Book of Home Cookery - 1970s edition. The meal recipes are very 1970s so I don't use them much apart from flicking through nostalgically, but the cakes, biscuits and sweet foods always bring back memories of weekend baking sessions when I was small. I think the book could be bought with the milk & delivered by the milkman. My mum has her original copy which is spineless and very much showing its age. I managed to find the same edition on eBay (most of the ones for sale are newer and don't have all of the recipes I wanted) it wasn't cheap but I don't regret buying it. It is in good condition for its age but still looks like how my mum's book looked back in the 70s

I have that one and there are several traditional British recipes in it. The cakes especially. Perfect for this time of year.
There's a delicious pecan tart in it.
Could really go some Dundee cake or parkin right now.

This is my most splattered - utterly brilliant in every way. She has tested every recipe to death and it shows

Just bought the new one “Tonight” and can tell it will end up equally splattered!

Ohhhh I have to be careful on threads like this as I end up wanting every book I don't already have!

Amazon wish list is growing...

I have all the classics and have been cooking from them for decades - Jamie, Nigel, Nigella, Delia, Ballymaloe - even Mrs Beeton!

Id not bought any cookery books for ages but the Nagi ones are out of this world!!! And recipes very popular with my young adult children.

Dinner from Meera Sodha is really good and I also love Anna Jones

Thanks for all the recent additions, it's just as well Christmas is around the corner with the size of my Amazon wish list!

Fuschia Dunlop Every Grain of Rice. Lovely Chinese recipes

Me too @Saveitnotforme - I have lots of modern classics (and some old!) I let go of 40-50 cook books just recently but still have loads. So I really shouldn't buy too many more...

A lot of books already mentioned and Rachel Roddy’s Two Kitchens and Five Quarters. They are my favourite Italian cookbooks and have beautiful pictures and recipes that always work.